Over here in the UK, Royal Mail has a long tradition of releasing collectible stamps. Many of these are the kind of weighty fare you’d expect from a postal service; recent collections include memorial sets for Queen Elizabeth and a variety of Charles-themed coronation stamps.
However, they also do more pop culture-themed collections – often specifically British ones, such as the Iron Maiden, Aardman Animations or FA Cup ones. Recently, they unveiled a new set based on a classic British property – Warhammer.
Royal Mail were kind enough to send us some to review – let’s take a look at what the collection has to offer.
The Warhammer Presentation Pack
The presentation pack is a two-part item – on one side are six stamps with model images, two each for 40k, AoS, and The Old World. The latter is a surprising inclusion here – it’s clearly positioned as a third property alongside the other two, when you might have expected the Horus Heresy to take that place.
Heresy does feature in the other set of four stamps, however, based on art pieces from across the Warhammer worlds.
The classic Rogue Trader artwork features, as does the Yndrasta image from the AoS 3rd edition cover, the Dwarfs vs. Goblins Battle for Skull Pass art, and of course Big E himself showing up for the Heresy.
As well as the actual stamps, the display card has a little blurb about Warhammer art on the back, with some non-stamp images too.
Finally, the inside of the envelope the whole thing comes in has a further blurb about just what Warhammer is, anyway:
It’s a neat little set overall; my favourite part is definitely the art-based stamps, which feel a little more like they fit the medium than the product-photo ones of models – even though models are y’know, what Warhammer is about.
Warhammer 40,000 Fan Sheet
As well as the general Warhammer collection, there’s a 40k-based fan sheet, with a set of 3 stamps with images of Intercessors mounted on an art card of the Indomitus cover.
Enjoy the ghostly image of my hand in the reflection.
This one is straightforward; do you like 40k? Do you want a neat little art card of 40k with some special edition stamps on it? Then this is for you. Alternatively, there is an AoS-one, with a full-sized card of the Yndrasta art and three of the Vindictor stamps.
Warhammer Stormcast Eternals Stamp Ingot
The final product I was sent is this neat little stamp ingot, featuring some Stormcast Eternals:
The stamp itself is mounted in a little ingot for display, with the same image of some Vindictors as the regular stamp collection. There’s an equivalent one for Marines, which I wasn’t sent.
There’s a number of other collectibles in the line, including some with game-specific medals, various different framings, some postcards – basically every form you can conceive of to put a stamp in or on something, including sheets of them like regular stamps (presumably for pasting into stamp books, or whatever philatelists call them). Most of these were released a couple of weeks ago on June 8th, but there’s a handful of further releases coming up over the next few weeks which you can find on Royal Mail’s website.
I am not personally a stamp collector, and I have no idea how these are received in that world – though I did see some comments on Twitter complaining about it all being a big cash grab, so it’s nice to see some hobby community traditions carrying over from the Warhammer world. For me these are neat little collectible pieces which will go into my cabinet along with my Koyo badges and Indomitus coin and JoyToy figures, and if like me you enjoy that kind of thing, then you’ll probably enjoy these.
